2/2
Anjem Choudary

Confrontation: Douglas Murray and Anjem Choudary face each other in the street after the South Place Ethical Society banned the preacher’s group from the hall

A public debate organised by a banned Islamist group sparked scuffles and angry confrontations over segregated seating for women.

Police were called after members of Al Muhajiroun physically prevented men and women from sitting next to each other leading to claims of assault and intimidation.

The event titled Sharia law versus British law was meant to see radical preacher Anjem Choudary debate Douglas Murray, director of the right-wing thinktank the Centre for Social Cohesion at Conway Hall in central London last night.

However the venue's owners cancelled the meeting before it even got under way because of "fundamentalist thugs" who clashed with Mr Murray's supporters at the entrance.

It led to a noisy stand-off outside the building in Red Lion Square for more than an hour as police intervened to keep the two sides apart.

Mr Choudary planned to use the event to publicly relaunch Al Muhajiroun five years after it was supposedly disbanded. It was led by Omar Bakri until his deportation for glorifying terrorism after praising the 9/11 hijackers as "the Magnificent 19".

But the preacher had the microphone snatched out of his hand last night after his black-suited security guards pushed out women trying to enter the main hall where around 60 Muslim men were seated. Women were confined to the upstairs balcony.

Giles Enders, chairman of the South Place Ethical Society which runs Conway Hall, took to the stage and said he was cancelling the event because of the forced segregation of men and women.

Mr Enders said: "I'm not prepared to have fundamentalist thugs in our hall preventing people from coming in. We do not condone segregation."

Mr Choudary then addressed his followers in the street launching into a fiery invective attacking British society as "corrupt" and "morally bankrupt" and warning the UK would be turned into a Sharia state.

He said: "This country is rife with social and economic problems and only Islam has the answer.

Muslims are multiplying at a rate eight times faster than the kaffir (non-believers) In a couple of generations this will be a Muslim country, inshallah (God willing).

"We will dominate this country, my brothers, and implement the beauty and perfection of Islam." His followers greeted the speech with cheers and cries of "God is great" and "Sharia for the UK."

The crowd included Ishtiaq Alamgir, the extremist who led protests against British soldiers during a homecoming parade in Luton and Simon Keeler the first white British Muslim convicted of inciting terrorism.

Mr Murray turned up at the venue later flanked by his own security guards after the talk had been called off.

He said he had decided not to share a platform with Mr Choudary when he realised it was not being organised by an independent third party and because of the segregated seating.

He said: "I'm perfectly willing to debate Anjem Choudary and Al Muhajiroun's ideas. His ideas are not difficult. They do not stand up.

"But it's very clear that this debate is not neutral. This was a segregated event, policed by Al Muhajiroun's guards."

The crowd branded him a "coward" as he tried to leave, so he returned to the square outside the hall and confronted Mr Choudary and his supporters in the street.

The pair spoke for about 10 minutes about why the debate was no longer going ahead and the format of past debates.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said police were called to reports of a crowd outside the hall at about 6.30pm but the situation was calm when they arrived and officers made no arrests.

Earlier, Mr Choudary said he had not broken any laws and called to Muslims to join his group."We are not a proscribed group and it is not illegal to be a member," he said.

"That's a challenge to the Government and to the media - we were not doing anything that was terrorist-related in the past."

Accepting that the group would have to pay attention to laws which outlaw the glorification of terrorism, he said: "We will have to choose our words a little bit more carefully."